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Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer who challenged the male-dominated world of high modernism to create a distinct identity for herself, has died at the age of 70 at her home in Paris. The Metropolitan Opera was the first to stage more than one work by her, and she brought new and mysterious colors to classical music.
Her publisher, Wise Music Classical, confirmed her death, revealing that she had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021. In Paris, Saariaho experimented with tape and live electronics, which she applied to nearly every form in classical music, including works for solo instrument and small ensemble, symphony orchestra, and opera. Over the years, she rose to the top of her field, which has only recently begun to address gender imbalances in the repertoire.
Her opera “L’Amour de Loin,” which premiered at the Salzburg Festival in Austria in 2000 and came to the Met in 2016, won the Grawemeyer Award for music composition. The Met commissioned her second opera, “Innocence,” which debuted at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France in 2021 and is set to travel to the Met for the 2025-26 season. Saariaho thus became the only woman to receive this distinction from the Met among living composers.
Born on October 14th, 1952, in Helsinki, Saariaho studied at the renowned Sibelius Academy. She was a pioneer of contemporary music and formed the group Open Ears with other young artists while still studying there. She continued her education in Freiburg, Germany, and undertook summer courses in the modernist hub of Darmstadt. In 1982, she moved to Paris to complete her studies at IRCAM, the institute founded by Pierre Boulez.
A comprehensive obituary will be published shortly.
